When Social Anxiety Enters the Escape Game

Xia Yi signed up to enter "Stairs". As long as she survives six matches, not only can she stay alive, but she can also get a large sum of incentive money.

She might even find a way to...

Chapter 10

Horror Kindergarten

"Wang En, so tall? A big guy? You should know with a little brain that he is not one of us, and you just ran away with him?" Bai Sisi could barely see Xia Yi's appearance with the help of the faint moonlight, and screamed in despair.

Wang En was also embarrassed. He had actually made such a low-level mistake. "We've already run all the way here. There's no point in saying anything now. She didn't look very tall from a distance, and she was running ahead. I subconsciously thought someone had run ahead to lead the way."

Wang En lowered his voice: "The most important thing is to find out who she is first."

Xia Yi turned around and took a step closer to Wang En.

Wang En and the other three huddled together and slowly took a step back as if facing a formidable enemy.

"I...you guys," Xia Yi raised her hand, gently trying to stop them. After a while, she couldn't help but put her hand on her ear and rubbed it. Her mind suddenly went blank. How could she have encountered such an embarrassing situation? What should she say? "Don't be afraid of me, I'm a player too! Not a kindergartener."

Wang En was about to lead his men to run when he suddenly stopped and said, "Huh?"

"Impossible!!!" Wang Sisi was the first to refute. "I saw you make the children disappear while sleepwalking at noon. Our mission is to protect the children. Even if these children are a little strange, we can't just kill them without finding out what's going on, right?"

"So that's why you're afraid of me?" Xia Yi's eyes wandered. He raised his hand to touch his nose again and said with forced composure, "I think I've figured out part of the kindergarten situation."

After Xia Yi finished speaking, Wang En and the other three suddenly looked up and stared at her closely. She straightened her body uncomfortably.

Xia Yi live broadcast room——

—Hahahahaha, you never thought, me! Teammate! I alone accomplished something that none of you four could do.

——This family recognition scene made me laugh to death, hahahahahahaha.

——So when Ye Baixin came over to inquire about things, he mistook Xia Yi for an NPC. Xia Yi's expression at that time must have been like he thought his family had finally come to recognize him. No, this is even funnier now!

——Wang En and his friends went to many places, but apart from finding the list of kindergartens, they didn't get any useful information. Tonight they finally got some useful information, but ended up angering the little ghosts. Tsk tsk, at this time of night, ghosts don't have any restrictions on where they can go!

The wind was a little chilly in the late autumn night, but at some point, the wind stopped and the air around seemed to stagnate. Even the withered yellow leaves on the trees became still and perfectly frozen on the branches.

Xia Yi didn't have time to care about the gazes of the four people in front of him. He turned around suddenly and looked around.

At some point, blurry shadows appeared around her and Wang En, and on the ground beneath their feet.

The shadow was stretching its body little by little, twisting itself, and desperately growing limbs and a head.

After the shadow solidified, it gradually revealed its body.

——Zizizikaka, puffpukaka, Xia Yi automatically composed a background music for these little ghosts in his mind.

Before the little ghosts took shape, Xia Yi felt the murderous intent directed at him as solid as a substance.

"...Throw, throw, throw the handkerchief, gently place it behind the child, and don't tell her... Hurry up, hurry up, catch him, hurry up, catch him, if you can't catch him, it's all over..."

The light and ethereal sound of nursery rhymes rang quietly in everyone's ears, the sound growing louder and louder. The children, who had transformed into children, clapped their hands and sang, gathering together. When they were about to form a circle, they stopped. Twenty-four pairs of eyes without whites, divided into several waves, stared fixedly at Xia Yi, Wang En, Bai Sisi and Ning Xi.

Wang En and his companions immediately rushed out together.

But when we reached the edge of the woods, no matter how hard we tried, we couldn't move any further.

"Throw, throw, throw the handkerchief, and gently put it behind the child..." The nursery rhyme lingered in everyone's ears.

Seeing this, Xia Yi also clapped his hands and joined the circle formed by the little ghosts. Just when the shadow turned into a child, the lights in the kindergarten building next to the woods, which were originally on, went out at the same time. There was no other sound around except the heavy breathing of Wang En and others and the light children's songs. They couldn't escape.

This game was obviously prepared by them.

Wang En and his companions stood there without moving.

"Wang En, what should we do?"

"What else can we do? Just be careful and play with them!"

The ghosts temporarily retracted their gazes from Xia Yi and fixed their cold eyes on the remaining people. Wang En walked forward. Bai Sisi took a deep breath and was about to follow when she was grabbed by Ning Xi. She took a step back and fell to the ground, sobbing, "My legs are a little weak... I don't want to go over there."

"But they are getting impatient!" Bai Sisi said in a hoarse voice.

"Come on, stop being so pretentious. Can't you see that we can't get out? We may survive by playing games, but we will definitely die if we don't play games." Ye Baixin said upon seeing this, and stepped over Wang En to join the game first.

They didn't know when, but the woods were surrounded by black fog, which gradually swallowed up the visibility until it engulfed them and the ghosts. Only then did the fog stop increasing.

"Ning Xi, let's go." Bai Sisi reached out to pull Ning Xi.

"No, I don't want to go. You guys make it sound so easy." Ning Xi slapped Bai Sisi's hand away. "Don't be so pretentious. I was the first one to go up and investigate. I almost got killed. I read about the game: ghosts mark people who have been attacked by ghosts, and they will be the targets of attack next time. If I participate, I will definitely die. I will definitely die."

"Everyone, don't participate!" Ning Xi's eyes lit up, her beautiful cat eyes filled with pleading. She clasped her hands together in a begging gesture, "What do you think? There's never a total annihilation ending in this game. As long as we don't participate, we'll definitely survive. We'll definitely survive. Don't participate."

The game scene fell silent for a while. The ghost kids did not urge anyone, but the smiles on their faces grew wider and wider.

When Xia Yi looked carefully at Ning Xi's legs and arms, he was able to see with the dim light the tears and scratches on Ning Xi's clothes on her thighs and wrists. The scratches on her trouser legs were exactly the same as the scratches she had left in the toilet before. The difference was that these scratches were all over her body, while Ning Xi only had them on her thighs and wrists.

The chances of the ghost killing her first are much greater than the chances of killing Ning Xi first.

"I've been caught by ghosts before, but ghosts won't necessarily come after you."

Ning Xi's attention was attracted by Xia Yi. Bai Sisi quickly broke away from Ning Xi and pulled Wang En to stand in the game circle.

"I don't want it. Who knows if you're trying to trick me just to get the game started..." Ning Xi stood opposite everyone, holding her head in her hands. She became more and more convinced as she spoke. "As long as you trick me in, I'll definitely be the first one to be targeted. Then you'll be safe, right? You'll all be safe, right?"

Tsk, love comes or not!

Xia Yi stopped talking and just clapped his hands to the rhythm of the music.

Ten minutes passed peacefully. The long wait made beads of sweat appear on everyone's temples, but the ghost children were still singing the handkerchief song tirelessly.

At eleven minutes, the nursery rhyme stopped abruptly.

"Now, the game begins." Bai Zhugui's hoarse voice sounded.

"Ning Xi, didn't join, eliminated in the first round!" Ning Xi turned around in panic when she heard her name, and without waiting to stand up completely, she rushed out with her body lowered!

The teeth-grinding sound of gnawing became the background sound of Baizhu Gui's speech.

"The eliminated children need to come to the center of our encirclement and perform their best show. It seems that Ning Xi's best show is drama! Everyone, you can applaud!" As soon as the words fell, Ning Xi, with blood foam on his face and wounds all over his body, appeared in the encirclement.

"Huff! Huff!" Ning Xi looked around, barely able to see fear and collapse in her eyes. The next moment, she pointed at Xia Yi as if grabbing a life-saving straw, "Go catch her! She's your enemy, isn't she? Go catch her!"

The fierce roar did not stop the applause from getting louder and louder.

"I'll do it, I'll announce it!" Xia Yi looked at the little ghost who was speaking, and only then could she see the little girl's appearance through the protruding blue veins on her face. The girl was the girl who came out of the mirror and attacked her at noon. Now with her hair tied up, her figure overlapped with Gao Minmin, the dead Gao Minmin.

"At the beginning of the first scene, Ning Xi felt a hand on her shoulder, and her consciousness became groggy. She was no longer herself..."

Gao Minmin's voice was filled with laughter.

"A strange monster took over my body. Brown and yellow hairs grew wantonly from its surface. They grew longer and longer. Ning Xi desperately tore at the hairs on her body. The hairs were easy to tear. A slight pull could tear off the skin on her body..."

"Blood flowed down the damaged skin, and the accumulated brown and yellow hair became more and more, and the blood-stained skin piled up into a small hill. Ning Xi also fell to the ground with resentment, realizing that he was a monster..."

Gao Minmin's ghost explanation was not exaggerated. In fact, Ning Xi's performance was demonstrated bit by bit according to her words, and the scene performed was countless times more exaggerated than what Gao Minmin's ghost said.

The corpse, whose pretty face could not be seen, lay quietly in the center of the circle. The brown and yellow hairs that had not been plucked out of its body absorbed nutrients from the skin in clusters. Blood flowed out of the pits and merged with the hair and skin accumulated next to it. In the mess of blood and flesh, the faces of the child ghosts were full of smiles.

Xia Yi looked up and looked around. Gao Minmin and Ye Baixin were already terrified. Wang En was a little better. He bit his lower lip tightly to prevent himself from screaming.

The dead Ning Xi dissipated bit by bit in the space.

Because in "The Stairs", every last trace of Ning Xi will be erased.

"Throw~throw~throw the handkerchief..." The moment Ning Xi disappeared, the nursery rhyme and clapping rang out again. The little ghosts had calmed down their excitement and happily started the game of throwing the handkerchief.

"Do you want to be the first one?"

"I think."

"No, brother, you start first!" The ghosts happily decided who would be the first ghost to throw the handkerchief.

Xia Yi followed the little ghosts' actions and sat down on the spot.

At the same time, Xia Yi recognized the ghost who dropped the handkerchief as Hao Si's soul.

Xia Yi had a bad premonition. A minute later, Hao Sigui stopped behind her and the handkerchief floated gently behind her.